Are You Sleeping (Brother John)?

"Are You Sleeping" is the English version of "Frere Jacques", and it is probably the most widely sung round on earth. Eight bars, four short phrases, four groups of voices chasing each other around the same melody. Children learn it before they can read. Gustav Mahler dropped the same tune into the third movement of his First Symphony, which was first performed in 1889, pitched in a minor key and handed to a solo double bass, turning a nursery song into a funeral march.

The English words are traditional and anonymous. The tune and the original words are French, and the English text is a loose translation rather than a literal one, which is why one important detail in the song no longer makes sense to English singers.

Origins

The earliest known source for the melody is a French manuscript held at the Bibliotheque nationale de France, "Recueil de timbres de vaudevilles", which the library dates to roughly 1775 to 1785. In that manuscript the tune carries the name "Frere Blaise" rather than "Frere Jacques". The sheet music historian James J. Fuld dated the first printing of the tune to 1811, with the words and music appearing together in a Paris publication in 1869.

Who wrote it is unsettled. In 2014 the musicologist Sylvie Bouissou argued that the melody was composed by Jean-Philippe Rameau, on the strength of a manuscript collection of Rameau material assembled by Jacques Joseph Marie Decroix and later given to the Bibliotheque nationale. Other scholars treat that as a plausible claim rather than a proven one, and no attribution earlier than the anonymous 1780s manuscript is documented. Anyone who tells you flatly that Rameau wrote it is going further than the evidence does.

The English words have no known author and no reliable first-publication date. They spread through school songbooks and playgroups in Britain and the United States alongside the French original, which is why many English speakers know both sets of words and can sing the two against each other.

Meaning & Interpretation

The song is set in a monastery. Brother John is a monk, and his job is to ring the bell for matins, the office of prayer said in the small hours before dawn. He has slept through it. The other brothers are singing at him to get up and pull the rope.

The French makes this clearer than the English does. The French line is "Sonnez les matines", an instruction: ring the matins bell. In French the bells are silent, and that silence is the whole problem. The English translation changed it to "morning bells are ringing", which puts the bells in action and softens the joke into a simple wake-up call. English is unusual in this. Most other translations keep the bells unrung. The "ding dang dong" at the end is the bell Brother John should have sounded.

How do you sing it as a round?

Split the group into two, three, or four parts and have each part start two bars after the one before it. Part one begins "Are you sleeping"; when part one reaches "Brother John", part two starts from the beginning; when part one reaches "Morning bells are ringing", part three comes in, and so on. The song is built from four phrases of equal length, so all four parts fit together at once and every combination harmonises. Keep the tempo slow and steady the first few times, since the usual failure is not wrong notes but one group speeding up and dragging another with it. Two parts is plenty for younger children. Finish by having each group stop where it started, so the singing thins out one part at a time.

Why is Brother John being woken up?

Because he is the monk responsible for ringing the bell that calls the community to prayer, and he has overslept. Matins was sung in the middle of the night, so the bell-ringer had to wake first and rouse everyone else. The song is his brothers doing that job for him, none too gently. It also explains the title he is given, since "Brother" here means friar rather than sibling.

Is Are You Sleeping the same song as Frere Jacques?

Yes. Same tune, same round structure, and the English words are a translation of the French. You can read the French text and its literal translation on our Frere Jacques page. Singing groups sometimes run one language against the other in the round, which works because the phrases are the same length in both.